Griz shows them a photocopy of the receipt and explains how it must have been overlooked in the original search of Erin’s room. “I’ve already put in a call to AIB,” she says. “They’re trying to track down the employees who might have been working that day to see if they’ll recognize a picture. As you know, after twenty-three years, it’s a long shot. But it raises some interesting possibilities. If Erin Flaherty came back to Dublin and changed traveler’s checks and then disappeared, it could have been because she was told to do it by someone who was controlling her. It could have been because she was getting ready to flee. There may be some other reason we’re not thinking of. But I think it bears looking into immediately, just in case there’s a connection with Niamh Horrigan’s abductor.”
Griz says, “Someone made a phone call to the house the morning Erin Flaherty left for Glenmalure. The roommates said it could have been a friend of theirs, but that was never confirmed in any way. I’d love to know who made that call. Also, Detective D’arcy raised a possibility that I think is very interesting. What if she wasn’t coming back to Dublin to take a bus somewhere, but to meet someone who was coming in on a bus?”
“So she came back to Dublin, met someone at the bus station, they went to change traveler’s checks, and then she fled?” Roly says.
“Why would she have been fleeing?” Regan asks. “Is there a possibility she was involved in Katerina Greiner’s death?”
“Of course,” I say. “The question is—and has always been, really—why did she go down to Glenmalure? Was it just to go walking or was she meeting someone? And if she returned to Dublin, why? If she was killed by the same person who killed Katerina Greiner, Teresa McKenny, and June Talbot, and who took Niamh Horrigan, then figuring out where she met him, how he convinced her to go down there, how he convinced her to come back, well, that’s how we’ll find Niamh.”
Regan nods, then looks up at me. “Thank you, Detective D’arcy. We appreciate your efforts and I know the Horrigans do as well.”
Outside, Roly pats me on back and says, “Well done, D’arcy.”
“Well, there wasn’t much to do. You’ve done everything right, all along.”
“Now, you know that’s not true, but thanks for the vote of confidence. We’ll be in touch.” I can already see him switching gears. They’ll start working on Robert Herricks, on the receipt angle. They’ll go down and badger the folks at the bank until they get something there. Regan’s already got things in motion. “Not a word,” he reminds me.
“Of course,” I say. “Not a word.”
“Thanks, D’arcy.” He’s gone, back into the bowels of the building, while I step out into the glorious sunshine outside on Pearse Street.
I don’t know what to do now, so I start walking, down Pearse Street, past all the new buildings at Grand Canal Dock, past the church at the turn of Irishtown Road, all the way out to Sandymount.
A warm breeze is coming from the east and I take off my jacket and tuck it into my bag. The sun comes through the clouds. It feels good on my face and arms. There’s a great little bookstore right on the Sandymount green and I stop and browse for thirty minutes, picking out a novel for Lilly and a mug for Brian with a picture of the Poolbeg Lighthouse and one for Uncle Danny with a picture of the smokestacks.
The strand pulls at me and I hop over the concrete wall and onto the sand and start walking. The wind whips at my hair, plucking it from my ponytail, and the sand beneath me bubbles with water just under the surface, revealing tiny holes and shells. I remember them from before, their pale pink insides like the pads of kittens’ paws. I stoop to pick some up, tucking them into a pocket, and then I venture out to the edge of the water.
The wind moves through my body. I can feel it all, feel time fall away. It’s in my lungs, my chest, my belly. I put a hand over the place where Lilly grew. I remember the feeling of Conor Kearney’s body against my belly, his voice in my ear, the way he held my face that night in Erin’s room. I’m aching for him, or for something. Overcome with a sense of timelessness, I feel suddenly that these twenty-three years are both in me and not in me, that I am twenty-two and forty-five, all at the same time, a mother and not a mother. I close my eyes and let the wind rush all around me.
I had stood here, right here, and opened my eyes to find Conor in front of me.
I count to ten and open my eyes, but the strand is empty in front of me, the water coming in, washing across the little mountains and valleys in the sand.
It’s early afternoon now, the day slipping away. I start walking away from the water, just wandering, turning right and left on winding little streets lined with neat stucco and brick houses, the sun catching windows and bits of quartz in the pavement.
Across the street a dog barks and I have a sudden image of Lilly and me living in one of these houses, walking along these little streets, sitting on a bench looking out over the gray-blue water, the clouds rolling in above Dublin Bay.
I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t care. I choose turns, one after another, until I’m by the Dodder and I follow the gray snake of it, swans floating here and there like litter, like I’m following a line on a map.
It dumps me out in Ballsbridge, on a busy main road lined with shops and restaurants and I make my way across the intersection to a green patch of park. It’s suddenly quiet, the path I’m on lined with fruit trees still hanging on to a few final blossoms. The grass is strewn with browning petals.
I come around a corner and I’m startled by a corgi that comes running out from behind a tree. A teenage boy calls out, “Beanie, Beanie.” The dog barely looks up at him and it’s running toward the gate so I bend down to pick up the trailing leash. When I stand up again, the boy is right in front of me looking panicked and I’m about to say that everything’s okay, that I’ve got him, when a man comes around the corner, calling out, “Don’t let him go through the gate,” and I look up and it’s Conor.
Finally, Conor.
31
1993
The morning after Conor walked out of the Gordon Street house, winter came for real. On Sandymount Strand, the cold air made little shells of ice on the rocks in the frigid mornings. The seaweed sparkled with hoarfrost. The Dublin Mountains were a bank of darkness in the distance. From the endless expanse of sand and water on Sandymount Strand, they sat there, waiting.
At first, Daisy didn’t want to let me borrow the car. “He doesn’t like to lend it out,” she said lamely. “My brother, he’s very particular about his things.”
“I’d happily pay him, like, rent,” I told her. “I just need it for a day or two, to go down to Wicklow. I want to talk to the woman at the bed-and-breakfast.” Something in Emer’s face made Daisy relent, say she would ask him. Later I realized they were relieved I was going.
* * *
I drove slowly, hunched over the steering wheel, trying to stay on the left-hand side of the road. It took me an hour and a half to get to Glenmalure but I found the bed-and-breakfast easily; it was the first one you came to as you walked along the lane branching off from the main road, a long two-story cottage with window boxes and a deep flower garden, mostly gone to brown, around the house.